What is Horizontal Knowledge Structures

This article studies the theoretical perspectives about new literacies that are dominant in the intellectual field of education at an international scale. The baseline assumption is that this is the primary field in which discourses are produced and then recontextualised (selectively dislocated and relocated) as curricular contents in teacher education (Bernstein, 1993). Our identification of theoretical perspectives is based on the analysis of scientific publications in education from 2007 to 2010. The study combines the exploration of more than 1500 texts, 70 of which were analysed in depth. The main objective was to graphically represent the different perspectives, showing the relationships within and between each one of them, as well as the agents who produce and legitimatise them. The identified perspectives and the constructed dimensions of analysis have been used in further stages of research in order to study national and regional curricular documents. This chapter reflects on what these perspectives can contribute to the field of Engineering and Architecture Education.